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Dieg_1990 t1_ja7mli1 wrote

Reply to comment by PrettyText in TIL a year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the English sent their own Armada to Spain, leading to similar losses of ships and men, and an ignominious English defeat by malektewaus

The British were always very focused on the narrative in my opinion. That's why together with the Dutch they created the duality of peaceful settlers vs violent conquistadores. Just check nowadays english-speaking and spanish-speaking countries and see where you see more characteristics of the native (pre-invasion) population. Or number of indigenous individuals.

As a fun story, I was told of the "legends" of the english armada, including Maria Pita or how some army attacks were repelled by literally country people with very little war experience. Quite embarrassing if true, but difficulty to confirm since none of us lived at that time.

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RhyminSimonWyman t1_ja89wrj wrote

If you're referring to the discrepancy between the amount of indigenous Americans in Spanish versus English speaking areas as though that provides evidence of a greater propensity for genocide among British settlers that's not a good comparison. There were simply many more native people in areas the Spanish conquered, nothing more to it than that.

You will note that there are still a lot of native people in South Africa and Nigeria, for example. In fact, very few people of British descent in either place. Of course the British committed genocide in all their colonies, but not more than the Spanish did

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anonymity_is_bliss t1_ja8y0jv wrote

Not to mention Canada has many more than the United States so it's not even an ex-british colony thing.

Like I'm 90% sure the whole manifest destiny thing skewed the statistics for native population too much to consider. Canada sure hasn't been angels with theirs (shoutout to Saskatoon RCMP), but simply trying to reduce it to Spanish vs English is a vast oversimplification of a complex issue given nearly every country handled it differently.

Also not to mention Argentina, where the native population is minuscule, and India (where they have the biggest native population despite being under the British Raj for a long time).

It's just a stupid notion that Brits were more vicious than conquistadors; they were both awful in their own special ways. The resulting native populations, although decimated by the conquerors, suffered under both.

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